a ye " ‘ al el a 4 : 
> 5 - ae ris en - 
a = J ek | a ee 
> 
ia 
28 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. |IV.2 
A 2. There be therefore chiefly three vanities in studies, 
whereby learning hath been most traduced. For those 
things we do esteem vain, which are either false or fri- 
volous, those which either have no truth or no use: and 
those persons we esteem vain, which are either credulous 
or curious; and curiosity is either in matter or words: 
so that in reason as well as in experience there fall out 
to be these three distempers (as I may term them) of 
‘learning : the ne Sst Mepiastica fantastical | Jearning ; the the second, con- 
— cascanee . 
tentious learning ; and the J and the last, delicate ate learnin, lelicate_ learning ; vain 
imaginations, vain ‘altercations, and vain affectat in a i affectations ; “and — 
with the last I will begin. Martin Luther, ‘conducted (no 
« doubt) by an higher providence, but in discourse of rea- 
son, finding what a province he had undertaken against 
the bishop of Rome and the degenerate traditions of the 
church, and finding his own solitude, being no ways 
aided by the opinions of his own time, was enforced to 
awake all antiquity, and to call former times to his suc- 
cours to make a party against the present time: so that 
the ancient_authors, both in divinity and in humanity, 
which had long time ‘slept in in libraries, began “generally 
to be read and | revolved. This by consequence did draw 
ora hecessity of a more exquisite travail in the lan- 
guages original, wherein those authors did write, for the 
better understanding of those authors, and the better 
advantage of pressing and applying their words. And 
thereof grew again a delight in their manner of style and 
phrase, and an admiration of that kind of writing; which 
was much furthered and precipitated by the enmity and 
opposition that the propounders of those primitive but 
seeming new opinions had against the schoolmen; who 
were generally of the contrary part, and whose writings , 
were altogether in a differing style and form; taking 
